A troubled comic book entry slowly finds its own, goofy, breathlessly entertaining voice, even if it kind of wastes Paul Rudd.

The Marvel number “Ant-Man” ends with a rush — not the half-hearted but still silly coda or the obligatory two separate, semi-comprehensible post-credit scenes only nerds could understand. It’s the climax — a dizzying, playful, joke-strewn dervish that finds the film truly, finally finding its own goofy voice. It arrives after a long, bloody battle to be more than a cookie cutter Marvel entry, a fight so gory the production lost its original director, Edgar Wright, about a month before shooting commenced. (He was replaced by the underrated Peyton Reed, he of "Bring It On" and "Down with Love.") He was too singular for what is now an assembly line, cranking out interlocking comic book movies with interchangeable iconic superheroes and interchangeable, decidedly non-iconic baddies.

You can see traces of Wright pop up here and there, like landmines, disrupting what would have likely been the company’s least distinctive product, albeit based on a distinctive, oddball, deep-cut title. Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, the handsomest con there ever was, who gets out of prison — for a semi-noble deed, natch — and soon finds himself in possession of a mysterious, retro-looking suit. When he puts it on, he discovers he can dramatically shrink in size. It was the creation of a tech whiz, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), who realized that if miniaturized suits became militarized they’d be as ethically slippery as drones are now. Sure enough, one of his former proteges, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), is on the brink of creating his own version, which Hank wants Scott to destroy for humanity’s sake.

This is refreshingly simple for a Marvel plot. They’re not battling for a dumb MacGuffin but for something with clear real-world consequences. (That said, will Hank destroy his own, equally dangerous suit? No, because the Marvels ultimately believe that benevolent dictators like him can be trusted.) It’s still a bumpy ride, a struggle to be personable while conforming to corporate protocol. It has bullet-headed character actor Corey Stoll as the villain, but his motivations are vague. It has a tough female lead (Evangeline Lily), but she’s always pushed to the sidelines and will be reduced to a romantic interest. It wants to be both business as usual and a kind of outsider, renegade member of the crew. At one point Scott even symbolically infiltrates the Avengers complex, sabotaging it with his own special, weird powers.

Michael Douglas and Corey Stoll are among the slightly unusual mentor and baddie casting choices in "Ant-Man."

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That should be the film’s m.o., but it still has to keep one eye on adhering to corporate protocol. And so while Rudd gets to occasionally crack one of his usual self-aware line readings, he also has to spend some of the movie brooding. Scott is fighting to win visitation rights to his young daughter, which is a bit too heavy for a film about a dude who can bro down with ants. Surely Wright wouldn’t have let that get so serious, nor would he have let Judy Greer, a brilliant comedian, be reduced to his nagging ex-wife. Wright, a keyed-up, breathlessly jokey filmmaker, retains a writing credit (of four, including Rudd himself), and there are little set pieces, jokes and pop culture references that were clearly too good to chuck. When these crop up or when Rudd charms his way through a joke, one wants to wring the film by the collar, pointing out that this, right here, is your tone.

Still, just as this is an origin story about an unlikely hero stumbling to find his voice, so too does the film pratfall its way into becoming, eventually, in pieces, one of the year’s best entertainments. It’s easy to love a bit, halfway through, where our nervous, reluctant hero beats someone up while ranking up a Guinness-level number of “sorry”s. Then there’s the ending, not another of the franchise’s endless upchucking of noise and stuff, but a more modest (well, not that modest) one that exploits the premise of a guy who can shrink and unshrink at the tap of a button. At the same time it mocks the idea of big time blockbusters by literally reducing itself in size, even staging battles on top of actual kids’ toys. If more of these would include nods to the Wallace and Gromit short “The Wrong Trousers” then a future of endless Marvels wouldn’t seem so grim.